Movie theater pictures movie#

The viewing public, however, didn’t always accept being limited to a single interpretation and occasionally enjoyed ambivalence in entertainment films. Outside the production of explicitly National Socialist propaganda films, diverse film industry regulations also prevented the emergence of “subversive” films or those violating National Socialist ideology.

Movie theater pictures movie#

The remaining movie theater owners, who had often appropriated formerly Jewish property, swore their allegiance to Adolf Hitler. Political conformity was enforced throughout the entire film industry, resulting in German Jews being banned from their professions at all levels. Jewish movie theater owners were barred from carrying out their occupation.

More than 1500 actors fled in the following period into exile. It resulted in discrimination, expropriation and persecution targeting Jewish and politically objectionable film and cinema makers. The impact of Adolf Hitler’s appointment as chancellor of Germany on January 30, 1933 was quickly felt in the film production and movie theater branches. Otto Werner was responsible for erecting the Filmtheater am Friedrichshain in a neoclassical style and Erich Mendelsohn built the Kino Universum ‒ now used as the Schaubühne theater ‒ in the middle of a building ensemble. The Lichtburg also opened in 1929 ‒ it was the cultural center of the newly constructed Gartenstadt Atlantic development in Berlin-Gesundbrunnen, designed by Rudolf Fränkel.

Enhanced by its original cinema organ, it can still be visited today. One of the most magnificent cinema buildings in the city stems from Hans Poelzig: In 1929 he designed the Babylon movie theater on Bülow-Platz (now Rosa-Luxemburg-Straße). He also played a key role in the realization of the Mercedes-Palast, Turm-Palast and Luna-Palast, the Alhambra and the Piccadilly. In the mid-1920s he conceived the redesign of the Colosseum, a grand cinema on Schönhauser Allee. (Union-Theater) on Kurfürstendamm, for example, was built in a Wilhelmine neoclassical style with a temple-like gabled front.įritz Wilms was among the most important cinema architects of this period. The movie theaters were often a mix of prestigious and functional buildings, both ceremonial and intending to offer distractions. The Ufa-Palast am Zoo offered 1740 seats (increased to 2165 seats after its reconstruction in 1925), the Phoebus Palast in Berlin-Kreuzberg had just under 1400 and the gigantic Titania-Palast in Berlin-Steglitz almost 2000 seats. Film palaces sometimes played to more than a thousand viewers. Some cinemas showed their versatile programs in several screenings throughout the day. 7, 1912 here in translation)Ĭinema architecture had its heydey – analogous to the development of the metropolitan area – following World War I. Two years later the imperial capital boasted between 300 and 400 movie theaters – “for Berliners, cinema is a basic necessity.” (Der Kinematograph, no. By 1913 an open-air cinema, the Garten-Kinematographen-Theater, had opened in Berlin-Charlottenburg. For instance, long before talkies, a synchronized gramophone and projector at the Apollo-Theater (a variety theater) allowed opera scenes to be shown as a sound film at the beginning of the 20th century. Experiments were undertaken with sound media. Technical innovations and resourceful tinkerers continued to make new projection methods possible. The typical “Kintopp” entertained its guests as a blend of movie theater and entertainment bar and thrived on the boisterous participation of its audiences.

Local cinemas, known as “Ladenkinos”, were often combined with a beer bar. A rapid increase of cinema openings occurred in the following period, especially in largely proletarian locations there were only 16 in 1905, but by 1907 there were 139. The first public film screening took place in Berlin at the end of 1895 at the Central Hotel’s Varieté Wintergarten, where Max and Emil Skladanowsky showed their “moving pictures.” The first permanent venue dedicated to the screening of films – Otto Pritzkow’s Abnormitäten- und Biograph-Theater on Münzstraße – is presumed to have been built four years later in the Spandauer Vorstadt (now Berlin-Mitte).